


xxvii. "i can't walk"

by tempestaurora



Series: it's okay, we're okay [whumpvember 2018] [27]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Gen, Rated teen for language, Whump, temporary paralysis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-27
Updated: 2018-11-27
Packaged: 2019-09-01 12:47:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16765456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tempestaurora/pseuds/tempestaurora
Summary: It happened in a crash.A blinding, blistering pain, then nothing.The loud screech of metal, the slam of cars against cars against walls. Crumbling brick. Shouts of fear, of pain. The air bag going off, Happy’s grunt.A flash of light, like the sun, burning into Peter’s retinas for just heartbeat. Then gone, like it never existed. The car shaking, everything shaking.The blinding, blistering pain, then nothing.





	xxvii. "i can't walk"

**Author's Note:**

> this one got away from me i'll be honest  
> i didn't see it getting this long but i'm really happy with how it turned out  
> can someone please notice and appreciate the amount of times this series has had versions of "it's okay, we're okay" throughout the fics because i really worked hard to incorporate that motif
> 
> this fic deals with peter losing his ability to walk for a while and i've tried to treat it with the care and respect it deserves but if you find anything that offends you as someone who has a disability or is handicapped please let me know so i can make the appropriate adjustments, thanks!

It happened in a crash.

A blinding, blistering pain, then nothing.

The loud screech of metal, the slam of cars against cars against walls. Crumbling brick. Shouts of fear, of pain. The air bag going off, Happy’s grunt.

A flash of light, like the sun, burning into Peter’s retinas for just heartbeat. Then gone, like it never existed. The car shaking, everything shaking.

The blinding, blistering pain, then nothing.

He whimpered in the back seat. He’d felt it coming; had leaned forward to yell for Happy to stop the car, to do _something_ – but there was no time for that. The lorry ploughed through the cars like they were nothing; like the crunched, broken bodies inside the tin metal death boxes were _nothing_.

Peter didn’t do much other than whimper, falling in and out of consciousness as his vision obscured with red. He didn’t cry or shout for help. He just stayed quiet, because that was all he could bear.

He stayed quiet and he watched Happy’s body shift in the front seat, a little at a time, luckily alive but maybe not all that much better off than Peter.

-

They’d been headed to the compound when the lorry driver had a heart attack and couldn’t stop for the red light. Peter had been picked up from school to spend the weekend at the empty Avengers facility. There were loose plans of movies, lab time and possible sparring – Mr Stark was always going on about Peter’s technique needing improvement, how Happy should teach him some boxing and Tony would give him a few lessons in the suits.

Peter woke up the compound, though it wasn’t where he expected.

Sometimes he fell asleep on the long drive up and would wake just as the car rolled to a stop on the main drive. He’d occasionally see a SHIELD quinjet take off, or a few officials in business suits not paying him the time of day. Sometimes he’d see Mr Stark’s flashy, expensive cars driving themselves.

Never had he seen an Avenger besides Mr Stark and Col. Rhodes.

This time he woke up to a bright fluorescent light, groaning.

“Hey, hey, kid, take it easy,” Mr Stark’s familiar voice said by his side, soft and gentle. Peter shut his eyes, the red-yellow lights dancing behind his eyelids. “It’s okay, you’re okay.” Peter groaned – he didn’t feel okay. He felt like he’d been run over by a truck-

Which, he remembered with a jolt, maybe he had.

“Happy,” he said, eyes slamming open. He looked around the room, but all there was to see was Tony Stark in sweats and a faded MIT sweatshirt sitting in an armchair that clearly didn’t belong in this room.

“Happy’s okay,” Mr Stark said, placing his hand on Peter’s wrist. “He’s in the next room over, sleeping it off. Air bag saved his life. A few cuts and bruises but otherwise fine – it’s, it’s you we’re worried about.”

Peter frowned. “I’m okay,” he said, though he didn’t know if it was the truth. Sleep was trying to tug him back under and he was considering letting it, but for the moment, he couldn’t feel much of his limbs – just the place where Mr Stark’s hand connected with his wrist.

Mr Stark didn’t reply, maybe noticing Peter’s eyes blinking long and heavy, and shifted his hand down until he clutched at Peter’s fingers. “May knows,” Mr Stark said, and Peter felt himself relax at the words. “She was getting stir crazy in here so Pepper’s taken her to get good and drunk.”

Peter exhaled a soft laugh through his nose. It was an exaggeration, probably, but May and Miss Potts tended to hang out with bottles of wine around, and if Miss Potts was looking after his Aunt then she’d probably be okay.

Peter managed a weak smile before falling back asleep.

-

The next time he woke up, a face he knew but couldn’t put a name to stood at the end of his bed with a tablet in her hands. She was small and dark-haired, wearing pale blue scrubs with a high neck and standing with a posture that told Peter that she was probably very good at her job and knew it.

She looked up just as Peter blinked himself fully awake and smiled.

“Good afternoon, Mr Parker,” she greeted, taking a step around his bed. “How are you feeling?”

Peter frowned, struggling for an answer. The woman waited patiently as he tried to locate his body parts, one by one, and decide how he felt. “I’m not sure,” he said at last. “I’m all achy but my legs are really numb.”

The woman nodded, scrawling with a stylus on the tablet. “That’s to be expected – we localised the anaesthesia to your legs in particular to help in the regeneration process.”

“Regeneration process?”

“Yes, Mr Parker. Tony made me aware of your enhanced healing and metabolism, which I’m sure will make this entire process much quicker than it would be for others – but we had to use a machine of my own design, called the Regeneration Cradle, to replace some of the lost tissue and fix the surface issues.”

It clicked in Peter’s head. “You’re Dr Cho,” he said.

She nodded with a smile. “I am. And you’re Peter Parker – Tony brought me in all the way from South Korea to take the lead on your recovery.”

Peter nodded, slow. “And what, exactly, is wrong with my legs?”

She seemed to hesitate for the first time in the conversation, glancing down to Peter’s legs that were both propped up but covered with the blanket. He couldn’t feel them at all. He could see them from where he laid on the bed, but he couldn’t wriggle his toes or feel the pins and needles they must surely have from being in that position for so long.

“You may prefer that we have this conversation with either May or Tony present,” she suggested.

“Why?”

“It’s a, uh, _sensitive_ topic. Moral support is often needed-”

“Dr Cho,” Peter interrupted, forcing himself to sit up. He glanced down at his hands when they twinged with pain, catching sight of the cuts and bruises that littered his skin. He recognised many of them as caused by the shattering of the window – the light of the sun burning his eyes and then blinking out of existence – but most were small and would quickly heal. “Tell me.”

“Alright,” she said, briefly pausing. Dr Cho sat on the edge of his bed, holding the tablet to her lap and avoiding his gaze by staring out of the window. In the distance, New York was covered in fog, faded and grey. From where Peter sat, he could only just see the tops of the trees that surrounded the compound. “Your legs took the brunt of the damage during the accident. They were broken and the bones were crushed and splintered in some places. We’ve corrected and casted them where possible and added splints to the rest. I used the Regeneration Cradle to replace the tissue and skin where it was lost-”

“How much was lost?”

Dr Cho blinked. “A lot,” she said, quiet. “There were places where we could see the bone. It wasn’t all sustained during the accident – your legs were trapped and during the attempt to extricate you from the car, you took more damage.” Dr Cho sighed and Peter found himself staring at his legs, covered with the blankets.

“Am I going to walk again?”

The doctor paused and Peter hated that. “If you didn’t have edited DNA, enhanced by the spider genome, I would say it’s unlikely. Not impossible, but unlikely.”

“But I do have edited DNA,” Peter said.

Dr Cho nodded and finally looked over to him. “You do. The scans show that your metabolism is working on repairing the damage as we speak – it’s just slow going due to the extent of it. You may well walk again, Peter, but I can’t be certain.”

Peter nodded once, numb. “Thanks, Dr Cho.”

“Of course, Peter.”

They sat silently for a count of five, before Peter had the urge to get up and run. He wanted to move. Wanted to be a part of the world and feel the ground under his feet. Since the spider bite, he’d wanted to go out for track at school, but knew he couldn’t. He just wanted to _go._

“Dr Cho? Would you be able to get Mr Stark?”

She blinked. “Yes. Of course, Peter. I’ll go find him.”

“Thank you, Dr Cho.”

Peter waited until the door was shut behind her to pull off the blanket. He gagged at the sight of his legs – he could tell they’d once been mangled and twisted, just by how they sat, uncomfortable, in their casts. They were split between casts and splints, and visible skin was bruised and raw. Peter could guess which parts were new tissue, because they looked fresh and clean, while the skin around it looked like it’d been scraped across tarmac.

Peter leant forward and pulled his left leg over the side of the bed, unable to bend it at the knee due to the cast. He followed quickly with the right. He couldn’t spot any crutches – maybe they planned on him staying in bed throughout the recovery, so Peter pushed himself carefully onto his feet and hissed at how he couldn’t feel them. The linoleum looked cold yet Peter had no sensation of it, his bare feet, bruised and dirty with the remains of dried blood, just sitting awkwardly on the floor.

He tried to take a step but it was like he had no control over his legs; like they weren’t his own. There was no stepping, no shuffling – Peter picked up his right leg and dropped it forward, tried to shift his centre of gravity over and found he couldn’t, found he was falling, yelping at his head hit the bed and groaning when he landed on the floor.

Peter stayed there, blinking at the plain white walls of his hospital room, until the door opened.

“Peter!” Mr Stark rushed into his eyeline, eyes full of concern and worry. “Peter, kid – what were you doing? Come on, come on.” Mr Stark shifted Peter enough so they were both on the floor, Peter limp in his arms, head sitting at the crook of his neck.

Mr Stark wrapped his arms around Peter, holding him as the first sob wracked through his tiny body. He felt so much smaller than he had at school. So much smaller than he did outside of the suit. So much smaller than he had when he woke up.

He cried into Mr Stark’s neck, being rocked gently from side to side. “I- I can’t walk,” Peter cried. Mr Stark didn’t reply, just shushed him quietly and held him tighter.

-

He didn’t talk when he was back in the bed, didn’t talk when May came to visit and pretended to be asleep when she started softly crying.

Peter thought about a life without being able to walk; the apartment building he and May lived in didn’t have an elevator and they lived on the fourth floor. They’d have to move and May couldn’t afford that. While he found a slither of relief in Mr Stark’s medical services being free for him, he would still have a life of paying things he wouldn’t otherwise.

He’d still be the kid at school who’d lost the use of his legs.

He’d still be the loser and he definitely wouldn’t be Spiderman.

Because how was Peter supposed to save the city if he couldn’t walk?

Eventually, Peter fell asleep, listing his worries and fears one after another, and they plagued his dreams, too. His subconscious slumped him back into the car, the screech of metal, the burning, the blistering, the lack of feeling. Happy’s yelp.

He saw the out, at one point – felt the twist of reality grazing across the back of his hand -but he didn’t take it. He stayed in the car and waited for the paramedics to get him out, tearing off his skin in the process.

Peter stayed asleep until he heard the sound of the Iron Man thrusters reaching the scene and Mr Stark’s panicked voice yelling _Where’s my son? Someone! Where’s my son?_

-

After a week, they put him in a wheelchair because Peter was aching to leave the room. He hadn’t spoken much during the week; had eaten whatever they gave him and slept the rest of the time away. Peter couldn’t find much to say; couldn’t find any combination of words that didn’t seem to have _legs_ and _walking_ and _I’m so scared_ – so he elected to say nothing at all.

May and Mr Stark took turns sitting by his bedside, and occasionally they’d do it together and talk in low murmurs, or loud enough that if Peter wanted to join in, he could. Sometimes Miss Potts or Col. Rhodes would be by his bedside, and Miss Potts would always do work as she sat there, providing silent support he appreciated and Col. Rhodes would try to talk to him, but Peter would feel too awkward to say anything back.

Because Col. Rhodes could walk but not how he used to.

There was a mechanical whir to the braces whenever Col. Rhodes moved, and Peter tried to figure out the statistical likelihood that there were already a matching pair in Peter’s size, sitting in Mr Stark’s lab.

Peter didn’t like looking at the braces and Col. Rhodes, and then felt so bad about it he rarely looked away. Still, he said little. Still, he felt this gaping hole inside him, slowly filling with fear.

When they gave him the wheelchair, May and Mr Stark and Dr Cho stepped back to watch him wheel out of his room, down the hall, and into Happy’s. They said nothing, just blinked.

“Kid,” Happy greeted, sitting up in his bed. Happy had a broken arm and more bruises than Peter could count. He didn’t necessarily _need_ to be in the medbay anymore, but he was anyway, probably more for observation than anything else. Plus, Happy liked being waited on, and he was getting paid time off due to his injury – he might as well spend it being served his meals than having to make them himself in his apartment.

“Happy,” Peter said, his voice hoarse from disuse.

“Heard about your legs.”

“Heard about your personality.”

Happy scoffed and watched Peter wheel up beside the bed, frowning as he tried to turn the chair.

“Downton Abbey’s on in five, so you better speak fast.”

Peter’s lips curled into something similar to a smile. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

Happy’s lips formed a real smile. “Same to you, Pete. I should’ve seen him coming or something; pulled out of the way.”

“There’s nothing you could’ve done.”

Happy paused. “You yelled before it hit us. You sensed it, huh?”

“Too late,” Peter replied. He was always _too late._ Too late to save Ben from the bullet, too late to realise the Vulture’s game, too late to every social engagement and school event because he would always get side-tracked by the smallest of things. _Too late_ , Peter noticed, was becoming deadly in his life.

“It’s alright,” Happy said, and maybe it was or maybe it wasn’t. It wasn’t up for Peter to decide.

They were quiet for a moment and Peter felt the presence of May and Mr Stark and Dr Cho outside Happy’s room, but determinedly didn’t look their way. He eyed Happy’s cuts and scratches, healing over, the broken arm across his chest, the bruises on his face. Happy, who’d give his life for Peter, and Peter, who’d give his life for Happy. It was just who they were.

“Can I stay to watch Downton Abbey?”

Happy blinked, looking over. He nodded. “Just don’t talk through it.”

-

He started physio two weeks after the crash. His bones had healed enough to take off the casts, but the muscles were wrecked and so were the nerves. According to Dr Cho’s scans, they were getting better, slowly. They were taking their time, intricately sewing themselves back together.

Peter didn’t like how long they were taking and he didn’t particularly like his physiotherapist. She was fine, sure, but she was chipper, optimistic and enthusiastic. Peter, still in the slump of the century, barely speaking more than five words to anyone but Happy – who’d finally taken off for his own apartment in the city – didn’t want chipper and bright. He wanted someone to tell him that he wasn’t working hard enough. He wanted someone to tell him that if he just pushed a little harder, the feeling would come back.

“That’s so good!” Lucy all but cheered. Peter clenched his jaw and stared defiantly up at the ceiling as she held onto his calf, pulling his leg into a stretch.

Peter had been exactly right on the mark about Mr Stark and the braces. They were the same dark grey as Col. Rhodes’ and they worked to keep his legs splinted as they healed. Unfortunately, while Col. Rhodes’ legs still had feeling to them – so his braces helped him stay upright when he walked – Peter couldn’t feel anything below his waist. Like it wasn’t even there.

He ground his way through the stretches with Lucy, the physiotherapist from hell, before the door slipped open.

Peter’s ears caught the whirs.

“Morning, Lucy,” Col. Rhodes said as he entered. Peter twisted to see the Colonel arrive in his gym clothes, though Peter could’ve sworn his physio was on another day.

“James! It’s good to see you – I thought you worked with-”

“Yeah, yeah,” Col. Rhodes said, waving a hand. “Thought I’d keep Peter company. I remember what the first few sessions were like.”

“The more the merrier,” Lucy agreed.

Col. Rhodes was a quiet presence during the session, but Peter had to admit that he liked having him there. He counteracted Lucy’s enthusiasm with small, _you got this, Parker_ s and when Peter couldn’t stand by himself, Col. Rhodes didn’t even have the slightest inch of pity on his face when he caught him.

After, when Lucy had said goodbye and gone, the two sat on the mats by themselves, two sets of mechanical braces whirring in conversation.

“You’ll get there, kid,” Col. Rhodes said. “It just takes time.” Peter nodded, mute, staring at his legs and how they didn’t use to look like this. “Are you angry?”

Peter looked up. “What?”

“Are you angry?” Col. Rhodes said it with a plain tone. There was no judgement here.

Peter shrugged. “No.”

“No? When my legs stopped working I was pissed. I kept a good face for Tony but the second he left the room I would throw shit across it. I’ve always been a soldier – I knew it was what I was born to be since I was little, and I was so angry that a fall and that stupid fight against my own friends could cause me to lose that.”

“You’re still a soldier, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, but only as War Machine now. Which – it’s fine. I love being War Machine. But I used to go on the daily runs with my unit. I used to crawl through mud and run the obstacle courses. Even when I was War Machine, even when I moved to Weapons Development – I would still be a part of that. And when my legs stopped working like they used to, I was angrier than I’ve ever been in my life.”

There was a quiet that stretched between them while Peter thought these words over. “I’m not angry,” he said at last. “I’m just really, really fucking sad.”

“Yeah,” Col. Rhodes said, a sigh. “I get that. You’re a strong kid, Peter – you’ll get through this. And maybe you’ll be really sad for a while, but you’ll come out the other side, whether you’re walking or not. But I’ve seen Cho’s scans and Tony’s plans and how your body works – I’m not a betting kind of guy, but I’d put money on you walking again.”

Peter smiled in the small way and nodded once before looking over to where Col. Rhodes sat, watching him with a solid gaze. “Thanks, Colonel Rhodes.”

“Of course, Peter. And call me Rhodey. Please.”

Peter cracked a wider smile. “Rhodey. Alright.”

-

There were good days and there were bad ones.

There were days when Peter could’ve sworn he felt every inch of his legs; could even watch his toes wriggle, May standing nearby in silent shock – and then there were days when he would cry because they wouldn’t move for him. His legs would remain stationary and numb, like something that was simply attached to him, not part of his body.

The good days were always brighter. He didn’t go back to school until his legs _looked_ more normal again, but when he did he was in a wheelchair and Ned was waiting by the side entrance where the ramp was, practically vibrating with excitement. And on that first day back, people stopped and stared because Peter Parker had been on the news, Iron Man yelling _Where’s my son?_ into a crowd of paramedics and sobbing families and ended up by Peter’s side, news cameras following him as he ran by the gurney all the way into the ambulance.

And people stopped and stared because Peter Parker was in a wheelchair, and he still looked a little bruised and defeated, but he was also the same kid who answered questions in class correctly even when he hadn’t been paying attention, who stammered responses to questions he hadn’t seen coming, who laughed at whatever snide comment MJ had made in his presence.

The bad days were always grey-toned and they dragged on forever, the sky knowing how Peter was feeling as his morning physio left him on the mat, staring at useless legs that wouldn’t heal faster. Within the week he returned to school, Peter Parker being in a wheelchair was just another part of life and just another part of him to belittle.

The bad days resembled the words from Flash Thompson’s mouth as he hurled them through the cafeteria. They resembled the hips of students who knocked his backpack onto the floor, or his books, or his homework and didn’t even stop to look back and see him. They resembled the fucking handicap entrance door being locked and Peter having to wait outside until Ned could find someone with a key and being late to class and rolling in with the teacher’s concerned yet still disapproving gaze and having to swallow it all down without screaming.

Because Rhodey was right, eventually. Peter moved past sad and he got to angry. He got to real fucking pissed and he felt righteous anger in the parts of his body that still worked, because he watched the news idly from the compound or the tower or wherever he was being stored, inanimate and silent, now he couldn’t reach his apartment floor, and people were dying and injured and afraid and they were all waiting on Spiderman-

But Spiderman was stuck in bed or in a wheelchair or occasionally on the ground, because he thought that would be a nice place to sit and realised too late that he didn’t want to be there.

Spiderman wasn’t coming because Peter couldn’t walk.

Until the day he could.

-

He woke up to his legs hurting.

No, not just hurting, _burning._ The type of powerful aching splicing pain that reminded Peter too well of the crash and threw him out of his slumber with a gasp. He rolled onto his side, eyes clenched tight against the pain. His breathing became laboured as it pierced through his legs causing him to yell into his pillow.

“Mr Parker,” FRIDAY said from on high, “are you in distress?”

“YES!” Peter yelled. “Yes! Get someone! Get anyone!”

It was three seventeen am when Peter felt his legs again and he almost ( _almost_ ) wished for the numbness to come back and smother him once more.

Mr Stark ran into the room, eyes wide and half dressed. “Peter? Oh my god, Peter. Oh my god – what is it? Peter? Peter, I need you to tell me what’s going on.”

Mr Stark pulled Peter into his side, clenching him tight against the writhing. “Legs,” Peter choked out. “They- they _hurt-_ ”

“FRIDAY, call in Helen. And her staff. Wake up May.”

“Understood.”

Mr Stark held him for a moment, Peter’s face already soaking with tears, his throat raw from screaming, fingers tight in the fabric of Mr Stark’s t-shirt. Then, with a huff, he adjusted his grip, shoving his hands beneath the kid’s knees and lifting him up. Mr Stark all but ran to the medbay.

-

The on-call doctor in the Avengers compound did the only thing they could think of to make the pain stop quickly; they put Peter under with the same anaesthesia they used to use on Steve Rogers. Peter was out like a light after that.

-

Creating pain relief that only targeted his legs had been a long process the first time and it was the second too – but the goal now was to stop the pain altogether, not to numb it out entirely. (Before, however, they hadn’t known that Peter wouldn’t be able to feel a damn thing, either way.)

By the time Helen arrived, she’d already received the updates from FRIDAY. She spared one look for May and Tony, holding each other as if they would fall down otherwise, before instructing her team to make a space in the surgical room.

“ _Surgery?_ ” May asked. “Are you serious? What for? The feeling finally came back, he-”

Helen pushed up the sides of Peter’s bed so he wouldn’t roll out when moved, before pulling up the legs of Thor pyjama trousers. The skin beneath was red and angry, as if it was at war with itself.

“I’ve been studying Peter’s abilities since the accident,” she said, pursing her lips at the discolouration. “I’d marked this as a possibility, but not likely.”

“What is it?” Tony asked.

“The Regeneration Cradle’s purpose is to print tissue to replace what was lost. The cells don’t know they’re bonding with anything synthetic, it’s _that_ close to the original make up.”

Tony blinked. “Peter’s cells know.”

Helen nodded. “It’s a good sign that they do, though,” she said. “He can _feel_ again. His body has finally gotten to the point where it’s almost finished repairing and it’s just discovered that there’s something blocking its way. That’s why he’s in pain.” She looked to May, met her eyes. “In the surgery, I’m going to remove the synthetic tissue. He’ll stay in bed for a few days as his body grows back into place, and then, as far as I can tell, he should be fine.”

“He should be fine,” May repeated.

Helen smiled. “Mr Parker is something of a medical marvel. When he’s back in good health, I’ll start working on how to create tissue that his body won’t reject.”

-

The heart monitor woke Peter up.

A steady beeping sound that drilled into Peter’s ears and reminded him of the real world. He was having the dream where he was stuck in the back seat of Happy’s car, again. Stuck and in pain – the sun burning, burning, then gone – as Happy twitched in the front seat.

Reality slithered past his eyes, tempting, and he grabbed hold of it.

He groaned. The fluorescent light was still as annoying as always.

“Peter.” _Aunt May._

He tried to smile at her as she leaned above him, blocking out the light. Her smile, however, was blinding. “Oh, Peter.”

He hummed, shutting his eyes again.

He felt a familiar hand clasp against his wrist. “Good to have you back, kid.”

-

Rhodey visited him later that day and Peter stared at his braces for a while, unsure what he was feeling.

“It’s okay, Peter,” Rhodey said, when he caught on.

Peter blinked. “Is it?”

“Yeah. It is.”

“I can feel my legs,” Peter said. “Dr Cho thinks I’ll be back on my feet by the weekend.”

Rhodey nodded. “That’s great. You deserve it, kid.”

“So do you.”

Rhodey smiled and Peter figured it out: guilt. He was feeling guilty for having what Rhodey didn’t. “Sure I do,” he agreed, “but that’s just not how life’s going for me right now. Maybe it will one day. Maybe Cho will figure that out – or some other great doctor. Maybe Banner will come back from wherever he disappeared off to and have a miracle cure. Maybe not.”

“How can you sit there, all _okay_ , while I get better?” Peter asked.

“Because I care about you,” Rhodey replied, rolling his eyes. “And I’m happy for you. And just because I don’t get to walk without the braces doesn’t mean that you should be assigned to the same fate. _Kid,_ I’ve made my peace with this.”

“I thought you were angry.”

“I’m not Banner,” Rhodey replied, mild. “Being angry all the time takes a lot out of you. Being angry all the time makes you into a different kind of man. It’s better to let the anger go, Pete. Sure, it’s unfair – but it doesn’t mean I have to be pissed about it for the rest of my life.”

-

Peter started walking at nine months old. He took stumbling steps into his mother’s arms as she laughed and grinned, his father sitting by her side. By twelve months he was walking all the time, toddling place to place and running after the neighbour’s dog on his tiny little legs.

Peter started walking again just like that.

At first, it was slow, aching steps that he stared at in awe. May held one of his hands as he went, her smile so different from his mother’s, but also the only one of the two he could remember. Mr Stark would be in front of him, arms open in case he needed to dart forward and catch Peter.

Then, he was off. He was walking without the crutches, without the braces; his skin bound back together, all his own, the redness faded, the nerves sparking like they should be inside his body. He went from walking to jogging to running, and then he was flipping through the gym, teaching his legs how to go from cartwheels into handsprings into barani flips.

At school, he got the looks all over again as he climbed out of Mr Stark’s vividly orange Audi and ran up the steps to meet Ned. Peter’s smile had never been wider than when he walked into class and people stopped talking to watch him go, to watch his legs work when they’d believed they never would again.

Then, he would be flying down the school steps and running off down the street. He would end up in an alley and change into his suit; crawling up the walls and leaping off roofs all over again. Spiderman graced the streets of Queens almost two months after he’d disappeared. For a school of baby geniuses, not even the kids at Midtown put Peter Parker’s time in a wheelchair together with Spiderman’s absence.

When he walked and ran and flipped, he didn’t take it for granted. He took each precious moment in his hands and thanked whatever higher power gave them to him.

And when he dreamed, the accident still came to him sometimes. He was still in the car, stuck and aching – but now, he could grab onto reality before it presented itself. Now, he could open the door, even if it was crushed against a wall, climb out of the car and wait in the street for the Iron Man thrusters.

And when Mr Stark started yelling _Where’s my son?,_ Peter would raise a hand and say _Over here, Mr Stark! I’m over here!_

**Author's Note:**

> did i do it  
> did i finally write whump


End file.
